


you should be alone with me

by TheoMiller



Category: Fantastic Four (2015)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-03 14:08:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5294120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a perfectly logical reason for Ben and Reed to be showering together. Honestly. Totally innocent things best friends do, really, right up until they start making out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> LOOK. I held out posting long enough, okay. Also, they're seventeen in this, which makes them legal in NY. ALSO. this was supposed to be two chapters. and then it became three. and then i was like "okay four. four and that's it" and now. who knows. certainly not me.

"Ben," says Reed. He blinks owlishly, like he's just woken up. "What are you doing here?"

"Checking on you while your mom's at work. You do know you're not supposed to sleep with a concussion when no one's here to keep an eye on you, right?" The nurse had kept saying things like  _very mild_ , and _just a precaution_ , but Ben's a worrier by nature. Especially about Reed.

"I set up an alarm system that sends an e-mail to my mother to call if don't turn it off in five minutes of the alarm going off at steadily louder intervals."

Ben laughs. "Of course you did."

"You don't have to stay," Reed says. "I'm sure Abigail would appreciate you going over there."

"Uh," says Ben. "She dumped me. Yesterday."

Reed frowns, glasses slipping down his nose. "She dumped you? Why?"

Ben starts to tell him that she'd broken up with him by nervously admitting she was gay for her friend, but stops. Somehow he thinks it's not his secret to share. And... he really doesn't want to think about some of the stuff she said, about realizing things were more than friendship, because that's a road he can't go down. "It wasn't working out," he says instead. "Are you going to make me stand on the porch all day?"

"Oh," Reed says. He takes a step back, and nearly topples over the second he lets go of the door frame. Ben catches his elbow and keeps him on his feet. "I'm going to take a shower," he says. 

Ben is about to tell him there's not a chance in hell he's going to let him take a shower when he catches a whiff of Reed. "Whoa. You reek, man."

"I know," says Reed, and tries to make a bid for the linen closet.

Ben catches him by the back of his pajama shirt and hauls him back. "You can't shower alone, Reed, you're going to crack your head open. Again."

"Well, what do you suggest?"

Which is how Ben ends up standing in the shower in swim trunks with a very naked Reed.

"Which soap is yours?" Ben asks, squinting at the bottles rather than the pale expanse of Reed's skin.

"The shampoo and body wash combination one."

"The aloe stuff?"

"Yeah."

Ben sniffs it curiously. It smells nice, kind of girly, but clean. He squeezes a little out of the bottle and turns to Reed. "Duck your head."

"I can wash my own hair," says Reed plaintively. 

"You're going to keep holding onto the handle there and stay still," Ben tells him firmly, and slides his fingers into Reed's hair. Reed makes a quiet noise like a pleased cat as Ben works it into a lather against his scalp.

When he’s satisfied that he’s gotten Reed’s hair clean, he moves down to his neck, which leads to an interesting quandary, as Reed would put it. Namely, how to remain brusquely platonic with soapy hands sliding over his best friend’s shoulders, and curling his hands behind Reed’s neck to wash it too, and all he can think is, _this is what I’d do if I were about to kiss him._

Reed’s looking down at him with squinted eyes when he glances over his friend’s face, and he reaches out to push a soapy curl back before it can drip into his eyes.

“Ben,” Reed says. He almost sounds frightened, and Ben realizes this has to be pretty weird for Reed, who doesn’t seem to realize Ben’s been having confusing thoughts about him. But then he says, “is my concussion altering my perception, or are you…”

Ben kisses him.

Reed’s mouth tastes like soap, and his lips are still against Ben’s, but Reed lets go of the towel holder and clutches at Ben like a lifeline, so it’s the best thing, it’s the very best thing.

Except. Reed’s still not moving, and Ben’s got a low feeling of fear in his stomach that maybe he misread this.

He pulls back. Reed’s eyes narrow. “Oh,” he says, sounding… disappointed.

“Was that okay?” Ben asks.

Reed cocks his head to the side. Then, “I don’t have much to compare it to,” he points out.

Ben’s about to point out that he figured out pretty quickly that kissing was nice his first time, when he realizes Reed is dropping a hint.

“ _Oh_ ,” Ben says. “Uh. Right.”

He leans in and kisses Reed again, and then murmurs, “You’re supposed to kiss back.”

Reed surges forward, bumping their noses against each other, and Ben can’t tell if it’s his teeth or his braces that catch sharply against Ben’s lip, but he can’t find it in him to care. Ben’s only dated three girls, but he knows a few things. He parts his lips against Reed’s, lets his tongue dart out across Reed’s lips, and Reed shudders against him as his mouth falls open.

Ben slides his hand back into Reed’s hair and tips his head back to get a better angle, and then Reed’s knees buckle.


	2. Chapter 2

“Reed?” Ben says. His eyes are concerned as they search Reed’s face, and he moves his hand away from Reed’s head to hold his upper arms like he’s worried Reed’s going to pass out.

Reed straightens, aware that his skin is flushed. It feels like it’s a thousand degrees in the shower, and his legs feel like jelly for reasons entirely unrelated to his concussion. If spontaneous human combustion were possible, he thinks his feverish, prickling skin would be bursting into flames. “Don’t stop,” he says, with his voice shaking.

Ben’s pupils dilate even further, and he leans back down, and - it’s an exercise in new stimuli. Reed’s trying to catalog everything, because this is all entirely new, and it’s clearly going to require some research, because he wasn’t aware that the roof of his mouth was capable of producing pleasurable neural impulses. Or maybe it’s only for Ben.

He makes an embarrassing noise, a sort of whimper, and Ben’s hand tightens in his hair, his short fingernails digging into Reed’s scalp.

Reed keeps trying to replicate Ben’s actions, but it just knocks their teeth together, which is jarring and painful, but he’s finding it difficult to care when Ben’s tongue is sliding against his, and for some reason Ben’s thumb at the hollow of Reed’s throat is the best thing he’s ever felt.

He realizes, too late, that he’s hard against his best friend’s thigh, and he’s not sure if that crosses the line. Kissing is one thing, but—

Ben curls a soapy hand around Reed’s hipbone to tug him closer to his chest, and Reed gives up all attempts at higher level thinking to rock against the vee Ben’s hip, and Ben pulls back and ducks his head to lean his forehead against Reed’s chest. “Oh my god,” Ben says. “This is insane.”

“Thanks," says Reed, trying to keep his voice from shaking, trying not to nuzzle too obviously at Ben's temple, trying to control his breathing, and mostly just hoping Ben can’t hear the way his heart is going about three times its resting rate.

Like always, it gets Ben to laugh, and then the hand on his hip tightens. “Do you want me to…” asks Ben.

Ben’s flushed too, breath short like he’s been running, with his pupils wide and dark. Reed moves his other hand to rest over the pulse in Ben’s neck. It’s thumping wildly.

He knows the signs - arousal, increased heart rate, increased pupil dilation - but there’s still the weight of doubt, heavy in his chest, that Ben wants this.

Reed takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. He thinks about Captain Nemo, and Pliny the Elder, and murmurs, “Fortes fortuna iuvat,” to himself before he braces himself to meet Ben’s eyes and says, “I can return the favor, if you like?” with one hand sliding down to catch in the waistband of Ben’s swim trunks.

“Completely insane,” says Ben, and shucks off the swim suit before he kisses Reed again, skipping the soft press of lips to go straight for curling his tongue against Reed’s.

“That’s—that’s not an answer,” Reed says.

“I want to,” says Ben, his gaze meeting Reed’s. “Do you want to?”

Reed nods, his movements jerky, and it occurs to him, too late, that he might be dreaming all of this, stuck in a concussion-induced coma.

Then Ben reaches between them to take Reed’s cock in hand, and all Reed can think, and say, is Ben’s name.

Too quickly, Ben pauses, and then says, “I’m not—” and Reed thinks he’s going to stop, but then the next words are, “—used to doing this at this angle, do you want to…”

Reed lets Ben turn him around, and leans back into Ben’s chest with a soft sigh escaping him, relief that Ben isn’t stopping and utter disbelief that this is actually happening.

It takes an embarrassingly short time for Reed’s thighs to tense up, shuddering under the hand on his cock and the arm wrapped around his chest. For a moment, all he can do is breathe and let Ben hold his weight. They're actually about equal in weight now, despite Reed's height spurt.

Ben’s face is buried in between Reed’s shoulder blades, but when his head tilts back, there's warm breath against the skin behind his ear, which Reed is surprised to find is also a spot that reacts very well to physical stimulus in sexual situations. The mastoid process and the hard palate, he thinks. What an odd quirk of evolution.

Reed turns around and rakes his eyes over Ben; he’s tanned nearly all over, paler where his baseball uniform’s shirt ends on his upper arms, and even paler where his swim trunks cover him during the hot summer months where the only relief from the heat is Reed’s parents’ pool membership. He’s also muscled in a way Reed will never be, all planes of muscle where Reed is skin and bone.

“You’re incredible,” says Reed, and watches the way Ben’s ears get pinker at the compliment.

“I have practice, I guess,” Ben says, and Reed’s about to correct him and explain that Reed’s appreciation is for him, not the - not what Ben just did, but he thinks that there’s that line again, and he doesn’t want Ben to get uncomfortable.

He reaches out to rest his hand against Ben’s stomach, which is just shy of having clearly defined abs, and says, “do you still want—”

“Yeah,” Ben says, and Reed curls his hand around his best friend’s cock. He gets what Ben meant - it is weird, doing it at this angle, after being used to only touching yourself. But he adjusts quickly, and studies Ben’s face with a scientific level of scrutiny as he moves his hand with increasing confidence.

Ben lasts longer than him, but not by much, and Reed braves leaning in for a kiss as Ben clutches at his hair again, and is rewarded by the discovery of how his name feels when it’s spoken on a hitching gasp against his lips.

Reed is considering whether he’ll be able to completely memorize the ridges along the roof of Ben’s mouth when his alarm goes off, and then both jump back guiltily. “Uh,” he says.

“I’ll turn that off, you finish washing up,” says Ben, and then pauses. “You’re going to hold onto that the entire time I’m gone, right?” He adds, pointing at the washcloth holder.

“Of course,” Reed says. He’s alone in the shower a moment later, and he rinses down the walls to hide any evidence from his mother’s prying eyes, and to distract himself from the sinking feeling that this is going to be one of those things they never talk about again.

He's just starting to feel a little sick, and then Ben's back. He pushes sliding door open and then hesitates before stepping in. "Hey, uh," says Ben. He's clutching rather tightly at the towel around his waist, and can't seem to meet Reed's eyes, studying the lower half of his face instead.

"Was that, is that what rebound sex is?"

Ben finally looks up at him. " _What_?"

"You... you just broke up with Abigail."

"Yeah," says Ben, "because we're both kind of into other people."

Reed didn't know he could feel even worse. He adjusts his foggy glasses and manages, "That's. Cool. Uh, who?"

"For the love of--" Ben throws up his hands and steps inside the shower. He looks pissed off as he slams the door closed a little too hard and then turns to face Reed. "Reed, how many times am I going to have to kiss you before you figure out that I'm kind of crazy about you?"


	3. Chapter 3

Reed just stares at him. And then, nervously, wets his lips. Ben can't help but glance down again, because he's kind of going insane now that he's started letting himself look at Reed with want after, shit, nearly two whole years since Ben went _oh, hey, wow_. It's like his brain is just intent on making up for lost time, which. He's already rushing headlong into this, and if he's not the sensible one here, they're going to end up doing something incredibly dumb.

"Are you lying to me?" asks Reed.

"What exactly do you think of me?" Ben says, before he can stop himself. "Do you really think I'd use you for rebound sex or, or lie about being completely in love with you?  _Really_?"

"Well, you won't look at me!"

Ben has to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Reed. I've wanted to kiss you since sophomore year. I got dumped, like, twelve hours ago, and I've been feeling relieved, and guilty about being relieved, and worried sick about you, and we just fooled around in your mother's shower, I'm kind of having an entire internal freakout, okay, this is too much,  you'll have to excuse me being a little distracted by the fact that I just  _kissed you_. A lot."

"Oh." Reed's doing his science-squinty thing. Like Ben's as puzzling as managing teleportation in his parents' garage at ten years old. Yeah, this is gonna suck.

"Look, can I put pants on before you do the whole letting me down easy thing?"

"Pants are probably a good idea," says Reed, slowly. "Why would I let you down?"

"Because I've said, well, three times now that I'm feeling less than platonic things for you and you haven't said it  _back_."

Reed frowns, and then he's got his hands on Ben's face, faster and more smoothly than Ben thought Reed could move even without a concussion, and Reed brushes a thumb across Ben's face gently, incredibly gently, and then he says, "Ben. You're my best friend. You're my best friend, how could I not love you?"

"Are you sure," says Ben, because he can't do this if Reed isn't absolutely certain.

"Do you remember when we watched that ridiculous movie where that girl didn't recognize her true love just because he had a mask on?"

"Don't malign  _The Princess Bride_ right now, Reed," says Ben.

"Do you remember that bit in the beginning, the as you wish thing."

Ben's mouth is far too dry for him to say something sarcastic, like,  _no, I've only seen that movie a hundred times, why would I remember one of the most memorable quotes?_ so he just says, "yeah."

"Thanks," Reed says, flatly, so flatly that Ben is momentarily jarred by it, and then he realizes.

"Are you seriously," says Ben. "That was so cheesy."

"I have a concussion," Reed replies, with a little smile. "It's a legitimate excuse. Although, you know, I was trying to be romantic," he adds, pointedly.

Ben kisses him quickly. "Reed?" he says, about to suggest they put those pants on after all, because the steam has officially emptied out of the bathroom, it's cold, the towel is damp and sticking to him, and he doesn't know what time it is, but he really doesn't want to find out it's past five by way of Reed's mother coming home.

But Reed's too busy chasing his lips, and Ben's really not going to resist. Although. "Don't think I've forgotten you called my favorite movie ridiculous," Ben says. "And that you thought I'd lie to you."

"I'm not really used to things going my way," says Reed, "you're going to have to. Like. Text me a lot tonight, to reassure me this is really a thing that happened. You kissed me."

"I did a lot more than kiss you, technically."

"You're completely incredible," Reed says, again, and Ben's chest does that thing it does when he sees a particularly cute animal and has a weird, instinctual urge to punch something.

He shoves his face against Reed's collarbone instead and says, "We really need to put on pants."

"I have a hypothesis about sensation on the mastoid process," Reed replies.

"Do pants cover the mastoid process?"

There's a pause. Then, "No," Reed says. "I was just jumping ahead to things I wanted to do while we cuddle on the couch."

"Hands back on that washcloth holder, and I will get us pants post haste."

"I think I can handle standing still, Ben."

"Really? Because this is a wet, slippery surface, and if you injure yourself, we'll be back in the hospital, and not cuddling."

Reed grips the washcloth holder very, very tightly. Ben grins.


	4. Chapter 4

"Reed, that tickles, oh my god," Ben says, and Reed grabs at Ben's shoulders.

"Hang on, stop  _moving_ , oh my god," he says. "I have a hypothesis, it needs testing, very urgent scientific matters here."

Ben stays still, and Reed manages to press a kiss just behind Ben's ear, and then carefully moves down Ben's jaw. He's got his glasses off now, finally, because between those and his braces, there was just too much in the way. His braces scrape against Ben's neck when he tries Ben's pulse point, because he thinks delicate skin is the secret here, and he pulls back a little to apologize when Ben jerks like he'd been electrocuted, but when he gets a look at Ben's face, it almost seems...

Oh. Reed does his best to replicate it, and Ben tightens his grip on Reed's arm. "Shit, okay, we. We probably shouldn't leave marks."

"Marks?" says Reed, and then his higher level thinking catches up to his mouth. "Oh. Hickeys."

"Could be hard to explain," Ben says.

Reed pictures Ben's skin covered in the bruises he's occasionally seen Ben leave on girls - "What if it's somewhere hard to see?" Reed asks. "What if I did that, just, like. Somewhere besides your neck."

Ben crinkles his eyebrows, like he's thinking, and then he breathes out, "Ah, screw it," and turns to catch his lips.

"Wait, does that mean I can," says Reed, the words punctuated by quick kisses.

"Yeah, yeah, anywhere you want, but I'm gonna return the favor, so be thinking up ways to come out to your parents."

Reed scoffs quietly; his parents won't notice, most likely. Mrs. Grimm will, but she might assume it's Abigail's handiwork, or Ben just doesn't care, and frankly Reed doesn't care either because he likes the idea of leaving marks, proof that he had his mouth on Ben's skin, and judging by the way Ben reacts every time Reed's braces dig into his skin, Ben won't mind Reed bruising him, in fact he might the exact opposite of mind.

He's got a working knowledge of how hickeys work, because he'd been confused the first time he heard mention of them on the bus in fourth grade, and had researched it thoroughly. At the time and, to be honest, ever since, he'd thought it was weird, silly even. What pleasure could possibly be derived from it?

But it's Ben, so Reed's kind of obsessed with everything about him, and it turns out there's something even better about hickeys than touching Ben and also leaving a mark on him that clearly says that Reed has dibs. Namely the way Ben inhales sharply, and the way he says _Reed_ in a quiet, punched out sort of way.

He leans back a little to make sure he's successfully burst a cluster of capillaries, and Ben pretty much tackles him, pushing them both over. "I love you," says Ben, breathlessly, his blue eyes wide.

"I love you too," Reed says. The words feel strange in his mouth, and he can't remember the last time he said them. Maybe to his mother, years ago. But it's natural to say it to Ben. So he says it again, and again, giddy with it, until Ben leans down and quiets him with a kiss.

"Reed," he says, "I'm going to be kind of ridiculous for a while. Just so you know. Because there are a lot of things I didn't say because I thought they'd be weird, and now I can actually say them, I'll probably blurt out things a lot."

Reed hadn't realized mutually acknowledged non-platonic affection meant he could start ignoring the usual social conventions for what you could acceptably say to your best friend, in terms of being attracted to them, but now that he thinks about it, it makes a lot of sense.

"I really like your ears," Reed says.

Ben ducks his head against Reed's chest. "Don't say that. They're terrible."

Reed has to prop himself up on his elbows to properly reply to this. "No, they're not, they're _nice_ , they suit your face, I'm really glad you stopped wearing hats all the time, it gave you headaches to have pressure on them, and it made you frown a lot," he's babbling, but he'd been very bothered by the revelation, years after the fact, that Ben's middle school insistence on wearing beanies shoved down over his face was based on insecurities brought on by Jimmy's insistence on calling him Dumbo.

In response, Ben curls his arms around Reed in a way that's more familiar than anything else they've been doing today, a warm hug, and Reed falls back onto the couch so he can hug Ben back, and they end up lying squished together on their sides on the couch. Reed keeps his arms around Ben, whose hands end up between them so he can run his fingers through Reed's hair, and it's kind of a chore to compress his limbs enough to fit on the couch at all, and they both elbow and knee each other a lot, and Ben complains loudly about Reed's pointy elbows, but it's pretty amazing. Although his left arm's going to end up going to sleep.

"I like your glasses," says Ben, as he traces careful circles on Reed's temple. "And the way you squint a lot, even though your eyesight's not bad now that you have glasses, because you're thinking about things. I kind of want to hear everything you think about."

"A lot of it's about you. Science and you, mainly."

"I'm up there with science, huh?" Ben asks.

"Yeah," says Reed. "Definitely."

Ben seems to be of the opinion that talking can wait in favor of other things, which, Reed isn't going to argue with, actually, that's—not something he's even the least bit ready to argue, since it involves more kissing and then nearly involves more orgasms, but they're on the couch and Reed's mom could walk in at any moment.

"Stay over," Reed says, seriously, once they're arranged slightly more platonically, sitting up and watching TV. Reed doesn't even know what urban legend Mythbusters is covering in this episode, because he's very much distracted by the way Ben's thumb is tracing shapes against the back of his hand and their thighs and shoulders are pressed together in a warm, unbroken line of contact.

Ben's thumb pauses. "You want me to stay over?"

"We don't have to," says Reed, hastily, "I just—stay over?"

"Sure," Ben says.


End file.
